Blackwell Reference Online

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P hilosophy of social science, modern european philosophy The basic claim of structuralism is that all social phenomena, no matter how diverse their superficial appearance, are internally connected and organized according to some unconscious patterns. These internal relations and patterns constitute structures, and uncovering these structures is the object of human studies. Generally, a structure is characteristically whole, transformational, and self–regulatory. Structuralism is a methodology that emphasizes structure rather than substance and relations rather than things. It holds that things exist only as elements of a signifying system. Structural methodology originated in Saussure 's structural linguistics, which describes language as a rule-governed social system of signs . In the 1960s, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss extended this methodology not only to anthropology (anthropological structuralism) but, indeed, to all signifying systems. Lévi-Strauss is generally regarded to be the founder of modern structuralism. Through his work, structuralism became a major intellectual trend in Western Europe, especially France, and greatly influenced the study of the human sciences. Foucault was influenced by this methodology in his radical reconstruction of intellectual history. Lacan relied on both Saussure and Freud in his development of psychoanalysis ... log in or subscribe to read full text